


That Kind of Mood

by fabrega



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Betrayal, Blackwatch Era, Campfires, Couch Cuddles, Cuddling & Snuggling, Divorce, Fluff, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Stargazing, Wedding Rings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2019-04-12
Packaged: 2019-06-14 12:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 11,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15388551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabrega/pseuds/fabrega
Summary: Thirty times that Gabe and Jesse cuddle.





	1. In Bed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [smarshtastic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smarshtastic/gifts).



> Thirty standalone ficlets based on the cuddling prompts [found here](http://tiptoe39.tumblr.com/post/130339708446/cuddling-prompts)! Tags will be updated as necessary as more chapters are added.
> 
> Thanks to smarshtastic for her help and support. ♥
> 
> I'm on [twitter](https://twitter.com/carithlee) & [tumblr](https://etriva.tumblr.com/) \- Come say hi! :)

Gabe is really looking forward to sleeping in his own bed again. 

A week and a half ago, they'd left on their two-day mission. Three days ago, they'd finally crawled back to base, mission only half-done, lucky to still be alive. If Jesse hadn't kept his wits about him, they probably wouldn't be--as it was, Valdez had gotten a pretty bad head wound and Shimada had lost one of his (thankfully cybernetic) limbs. Gabe had taken a shot to the gut himself, back on day six. He had hidden it from the others as best he could, winced his way through it, convinced himself it wasn't that bad. When they'd gotten back, Dr. Ziegler had taken one look at him and whisked him away to surgery immediately. The SEP treatments saved his life, she tells him and Jesse afterwards, showing them the shrapnel she'd extracted from his torso. Gabe doesn't doubt it--that SEP shit has to have some upsides, right?--and doesn't argue with the doctor when she keeps him in the infirmary for a few more days, for further treatment and for observation. He'd felt better after a day, and had spent the two days after that antsy in his hospital bed as they ran batteries of tests. Jesse had smuggled him pastries and paperwork, and Gabe had honestly been glad for both.

Now, though, he's been cleared to return to his normal life. It's late enough that Gabe wonders a little why they didn't just hold him overnight one more night and discharge him in the morning, but he's not going to complain. After so much time spent away from it, the bed in his quarters, _his_ bed, is calling to him.

When Gabe gets to his quarters, Jesse is already in their bed. Gabe isn't surprised, not really. He knows that Jesse's been filling in for him as Blackwatch Commander while he's been indisposed. It's not an easy job; Jesse deserves the rest. 

Jesse shifts as Gabe comes in but doesn't open his eyes, and Gabe allows himself to stop in the doorway for a moment and just look. Jesse has accused him, teasingly, of getting sentimental in his old age, but Gabe can't help it: he really likes Jesse's face. He likes the furrow of his brow and the purse of his lips when he concentrates; he likes the crinkles at the corner of his eyes and the way his whole face lights up when he smiles; he likes the unguarded, peaceful expression he gets when he's sleeping somewhere safe, and the thought that Gabe's one of the only people who gets to see his face like that. It's a really good face, and Gabe still can't quite believe that it gets to be the first thing he sees when he wakes up in the morning and last thing he sees when he goes to bed. Sometimes it feels like all he would need for the rest of his life.

Sentimental, indeed.

Gabe must linger too long, because Jesse's eyes open, and he looks up at Gabe and grins sleepily. "Like what you see?"

"You know I do." Gabe makes his way into the room, sits on the edge of the bed.

Jesse scoots closer, curls his body around Gabe's. "'m glad you escaped the infirmary. Didn't think Doc Z was ever gonna let you out of there," he murmurs into Gabe's hip.

"I think they were just making up tests there towards the end," Gabe says with a laugh, twisting awkwardly so that he can lean down to kiss Jesse. 

Jesse takes pity on Gabe after a moment, and he lifts up on an elbow to catch his lips in the kiss Gabe's trying so hard to give him before collapsing back down onto the bed. "You went how many days with a gut wound, dumbass?"

"Too many days?"

"Too many days," Jesse agrees. "Don't do that again."

"Yes, sir," Gabe says. He means for it to be sarcastic, teasing, but he'd be lying if he said that the pleased little noise Jesse makes at _sir_ doesn't send a happy shiver down his spine. He's gotten his boots off, and he stands now and shucks off the rest of his clothes before crawling into bed with Jesse.

Jesse moves to make room for Gabe, but as soon as he's in, Jesse is back in his space, sprawled across him, heavy and warm. Gabe wriggles a little, laughing, trying to get comfortable while maintaining the maximum amount of contact between them. Jesse's no help at all in this endeavor; Gabe can feel him smirking against his shoulder, and it feels like any of Jesse's limbs that Gabe tries to shift somehow become even heavier. Gabe pretends to be annoyed, huffing loudly as he moves, but Jesse huffs right back at him, squirms around in return, exaggeratedly kissing every part of Gabe that comes within reach of his lips. It's ridiculous, and Gabe wouldn't trade it for anything.

It's been revelatory for Gabe, his relationship with Jesse. Before Jesse, Gabe hadn't known how much he enjoyed this kind of closeness. Now, he's not sure he could imagine his life without it.

"You're terrible," Gabe says, still laughing, as they finally settle into a comfortable tangle of limbs. Reaching that equilibrium without Jesse's help hadn't been easy, but now that they've reached it, Gabe doesn't see himself moving until morning.

Jesse squeezes him, and Gabe can hear the smile in his voice when he speaks. "Aww, c'mon, you love me."

Gabe smiles back. "I do."

"Love you too," Jesse says quietly, absently, through a yawn. He curls in closer to Gabe--Gabe didn't think it was possible to get closer, but he is absolutely not going to complain--and they lie there together in the darkness, Jesse's head nestled on Gabe's chest, until Jesse's breathing goes slow and even and Gabe falls asleep.


	2. On the Couch

It's not until the mission is over, when all of the Blackwatch operatives are accounted for and on the shuttle out of Nairobi, that Jesse finally allows himself to collapse onto the office sofa with relief. 

It had been touch-and-go there at the end: Valdez and Genji split up from the team by a makeshift minefield in a dark corner of a warehouse, the blackout window Edwards had created with air traffic control for their escape quickly closing, Jesse watching it all on the flycams from Blackwatch HQ. Jesse had been maneuvering the cams through the warehouse, working in tandem with Genji to see if there wasn't some way to triangulate a safe path through the minefield; he'd lost two cams getting too close to the mines before Prithi, always the quick thinker, had commandeered a bulldozer and smashed the warehouse wall behind her trapped teammates. The destruction had attracted more attention from the security bots, but the team made it out, alive and almost entirely in one piece, and they were in the air and out of the city's sensor range with seconds to spare.

It's Jesse's first time running an op from HQ. Gabe had let him have full control of the mission: picking operatives, drawing up plans and schedules, taking care of all the logistics. The only catch had been that Jesse had to stay here, the team's eyes in the sky. It's _tough_ being this far away and unable to make the kind of decisive difference down on the ground that Jesse is used to making, tougher than Jesse had expected it to be, and it's the release of all this unexpected tension that makes his legs go out with relief when it's all over.

Gabe's smile is entirely too smug when he comes to sit by Jesse on the sofa, but Jesse is so worn out that he doesn't care. 

On somebody else, that face would be an _I told you so_.

"How the hell do you do it?" Jesse asks him, his head tilted back so he's looking somewhere past the office ceiling. He tugs the earpiece out of his ear and tosses it onto the table in front of the screens that are streaming the flycam footage. The team can make it back to base on their own. "I take back any shit I ever gave you on the comms about having the cushy, boring job."

Gabe doesn't answer; when Jesse turns his head to look over at him, he's laughing to himself.

"What's so funny?"

"Not funny, not--my elite strike team just ran an entire op, start to finish, without any help from me. Do you know how long I've been waiting for this day, the day that somebody could save the world without me?"

"Decades?" Jesse guesses, half-seriously.

" _Decades_ ," Gabe says. Jesse's pretty sure he's only half-serious too. "Since the Crisis, at least. It's a weight off my shoulders. I could finally retire."

Now Jesse is the one to laugh. "You, retire? After three days you'd be so bored that you'd be knocking on Blackwatch's door, trying to get back in."

"After three days I'd still be sleeping off the years of sleep deficit."

"Okay, fine--after two weeks you'd be back."

The look Gabe gives him is complicated, but Jesse is pretty sure the main component of it is fondness. "There certainly are things I'd miss." 

Gabe slips an arm up over the back of the sofa and around Jesse's shoulders, pulling Jesse close. Jesse, who was already feeling drained, takes this opportunity to lean over onto Gabe, let his head droop and his eyes close the way they very much want to. He's a lot more worn out than he thought he was, and suddenly sleep is calling to him--this job has made him good at cat naps, ten minutes grabbed wherever and whenever he can. It's especially easy in places he feels safe, and there's nowhere he feels safer than this close to Gabe. If anywhere is _home_ , it's here.

Maybe just a little shut-eye, just for a second.

"Don't know what Blackwatch would do without you," Jesse murmurs, trying and failing to keep his head above the wave of tiredness.

"Don't worry," Gabe says, the last thing Jesse hears before he falls asleep, "I'm not going anywhere."

.

Jesse wakes a little while later, refreshed, to the quiet sound of Gabe's voice. At some point during his sleep, Jesse's head had slipped off of Gabe's shoulder and into Gabe's lap, lying on his side with his back against the back of the sofa. One of Gabe's hands is resting in the dip between Jesse's hip and his ribs; the other is moving gently through Jesse's hair. It's relaxing, exactly what Jesse needed after that nail-biter of a mission. 

(It's not that Jesse hadn't trusted his plan, or hadn't trusted his agents. There were just too many things that could and had gone wrong, and Jesse was responsible, for the success of the mission, for the lives of his friends. It was one thing to be down in it with them, and something else entirely to have to watch it happen. If he'd lost anyone...)

Gabe's voice is quiet, and it takes a moment for Jesse to realize that he's speaking on the comms. Jesse tries to sit up, but Gabe's hands don't move, keeping him still. It would be easy enough to push him off, but Jesse trusts Gabe. If the team needs him, Gabe will let him handle it. Besides, he likes it here; if he doesn't _need_ to go anywhere, he won't.

Gabe keeps his voice low, even though he knows Jesse is awake--a kindness. "Repeat, Agent? You're where?" 

A pause. Jesse snuggles in closer, rolls over a little so that he can see Gabe's face. The hand that was above Jesse's hip is now resting on Jesse's abs, but other stays in Jesse's hair, tracing mindless patterns against Jesse's scalp.

"That's where you should be," Gabe tells the strike team. "What did you need?"

Another pause.

"No, I've got the comms, McCree's busy." 

'Busy' is overstating it, Jesse thinks as Gabe listens and then snorts at whatever he just heard. "For both our sakes, we're all going to pretend I didn't hear you say that, Agent. Was there something _mission-related_ you needed McCree for?"

Gabe's face goes soft as he listens to the answer. "You can tell him that yourself when you get back," he says, his voice gruff in contrast to his face, which Jesse knows the other agents can't see. "Put it in your report--if Morrison ever bothers to read them, he'll die of the surprise." 

Another pause, then Gabe makes an affirmative noise and says _Reyes out_. Jesse looks up at him, the question on his face, and Gabe rolls his eyes in faux-annoyance. "They wanted to commend you on your leadership skills."

"Awful kind of them," Jesse says, looking away. He hadn't felt like a great leader, but he's glad that none of the others had seemed to notice. He wonders, suddenly, if that's how Gabe feels when he leads missions too. Surely not; Gabe has _leader_ written into his DNA--possibly literally, thanks to the SEP. Surely he's actually better at this than Jesse is.

"They're right," Gabe says. "It's a tough job, and you did great."

"I hear that's the kind of thing you're supposed to put in your report," Jesse says, going a little pink. He feels the hand on his torso grip a little tighter. Gabe's not going to let him wriggle out of this one.

"Don't worry, I will," Gabe says with a mischievous grin.

Jesse shakes his head, then reaches up and loops an arm around Gabe's neck to pull them together for a kiss. "How long until they get back?"

Gabe looks at his comm, then up and away, doing the mental math. "Probably another twenty minutes?"

"Plenty of time," Jesse murmurs against Gabe's mouth, grinning, and then he pulls Gabe down again.


	3. On the Floor

Gabe sets the suitcase down on the bed and looks around at the bedroom. He and Jesse have called this place home for nearly three months now, undercover as a married couple to fit into this deceptively sleepy neighborhood while they worked behind the scenes to take down the child trafficking ring that, it turned out, was being run out of one of the neighbors' basements. The kids are safe now, and the shitbag who'd been in charge of the facility has been taken into custody and is currently spilling his guts to one of Gabe's agents back at HQ. The asshole hopes, apparently, that telling them everything he knows will get him some kind of plea deal that will lessen his sentence.

("A plea deal, for _trafficking children_ ," Jesse had repeated when Gabe told him, shaking his head, disbelief and a barely-restrained edge of anger in his voice. Gabe had unclenched his own fists and laughed in mirthless agreement.)

Now, the mission is over, at least this part of it, and it's time to pack up and head out. They'll return to base and fill out their reports and settle into their usual routine again. Jesse will go back to mostly living out of Gabe's room, their relationship the kind of open secret that's still supposed to be a _secret_ , no matter how _open_ it is. It'll be fine, once they get there, everything Gabe's used to, everything he signed up for, but...

He's on the floor with his back to the bedroom wall and his knees tucked up towards his chest when Jesse comes in some indeterminate amount of time later, staring somewhere past the suitcase and the bed and the far wall. 

"I know you said that we just leave the furniture in the living room, but--" Jesse stops when he spots Gabe. He looks at the empty suitcase on the bed, then at Gabe again. "Everything alright?" he asks, the question a careful mix of caution and concern.

Gabe waves his hands vaguely for a moment, not quite finding the words, before nodding. "Nothing's wrong. It's just...I'm going to miss this."

Jesse raises an eyebrow at Gabe as he slides to the floor next to him, his legs splayed out in front of him.

"Not--not the mission part, not the child trafficking. I'm not a _monster_. But this? The rest of it?" Gabe gestures again, at the bedroom and the house and the neighborhood, all of it. "I'm going to miss this. Grocery shopping. Yard work. Dishes. A real bedroom. A thousand little things I got to share with you that made my life with you feel...normal."

The smile Jesse gives him is a little bittersweet. "Why, Gabriel Reyes, if I didn't know any better, I'd say you were going soft."

Gabe shrugs, embarrassed. He's never been as tough as his professional exterior suggests, not with the people he knows, not with the people he cares about. If Jesse doesn't know that by now, Gabe's going to be very concerned about his people-reading skills, his pattern recognition, and his general ability to do his job. 

Gabe's voice is gruff when he manages an answer. "I get any softer, I'd be a goddamn marshmallow."

"Yeah, but you'd be _my_ marshmallow," Jesse says, grinning. He slings an arm across Gabe's shoulders and pulls him close, pressing a kiss to Gabe's temple as Gabe fights conflicting urges to wriggle away or to cuddle in closer. "Besides, a man could get used to this whole domestic, 'white picket fence' thing."

"Oh, could he?" Gabe looks up at Jesse now, and Jesse catches his lips in a kiss.

"He absolutely could. With the right picket fence, and the right person to be domestic with." Jesse winks, and then his expression sobers. "Never really thought I'd, well. Never really thought I'd get a _chance_ to take to it, let alone that I'd actually take to it."

"I know the feeling. People like us, the job we do..." Gabe pauses, leans his head against Jesse as he tries to collect his thoughts. "If I do my job right, other people get to have this sort of life."

Jesse goes quiet. His arm is still slung across Gabe's shoulders, and he reaches with that hand to take Gabe's in his own, his fingers finding the slim gold wedding band Gabe has worn for the entirety of this mission. 

They'd picked their rings together, as part of the mission prep. It had felt momentous, somehow, the two of them looking at wedding rings together, more than most of the rest of the mission prep for their fake marriage had. Gabe had picked a ring he wouldn't mind wearing forever, not just for the mission. Its weight on his hand had been strange at first, not disconcerting so much as _obvious_ , a reminder of all the things he had and all the things he was pretending at. Then--

Jesse's voice cuts through his thoughts. "You're still wearing it."

"So are you." Gabe taps his ring against the one Jesse is wearing, then laces their fingers together.

"Guess I got used to that too." Jesse huffs a laugh and crowds further into Gabe's space. "Gonna be strange, to take it off when we go back. Guess we ain't got much of a choice, though--everything goes back to Blackwatch, when the mission is over. That's how it works."

"What if you don't have to stop wearing it?"

Jesse peers at him closely. After a moment, he asks, "You asking me to marry you?"

Gabe splutters. He isn't, is he? What he _meant_ was that they don't have to give the rings back: Gabe had bypassed the standard Blackwatch procurement process and paid for them out of pocket, because Jesse was right, he's a goddamn sentimental marshmallow. But yeah, it would be a little strange to keep wearing a wedding ring when you weren't married, and it's not like Gabe hasn't...it's not like Gabe hasn't thought about it, over the last few months. Longer than that, if he's being honest.

Jesse nudges into him with his torso. "Not to be too old-fashioned about it, but a proposal usually includes the words 'marry' and 'me'.”

"We haven't talked about it," Gabe says. He hates how much panic he can hear in his own voice. "It might not change anything. It might still have to be an open secret. It might--things might get tough. Why would you even want that? Why the hell would you say yes?"

Jesse squeezes his hand and smiles. "Do you know when I decided that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, if you'd have me?"

Gabe would swear he feels his heart stop.

"That assassination in Monaco, what, eight months, ten months back?" Jesse continues, as if he hasn't just shifted Gabe's entire world on its foundation. "Y'know, the one with the molotov cocktails?"

Gabe remembers that mission. It had gone pear-shaped and they'd had to, uh, _improvise_. "I wouldn't call that an 'assassination', guy wasn't important enough for it to be an assassination."

Jesse laughs. "Right, right, okay, 'strategic elimination of the target that ended with a half-burned down hotel to cover our tracks', accuracy is important. Whatever it was, you in that tuxedo with that fire burning behind you? The way you turned and looked at me and finally _smiled_ , it was..." He trails off, takes a deep breath, kisses Gabe's temple again. "I felt alive, and wanted, and safe. I just knew."

"So if I _was_ asking--"

"I'd say yes." Jesse glances sideways at him and smiles. "If you were asking."

Gabe looks at the suitcase on the bed again, and then over at the bedside table. There's a small framed picture on it, a selfie of Gabe and Jesse, kissing on the edge of a scenic cliff overlooking a canyon. They hadn't really gone to a canyon; as part of the mission prep, they'd taken a series of selfies in front of a green-screen and handed the pictures off to a Blackwatch tech. The tech had then digitally edited the pictures to look like Gabe had taken Jesse somewhere romantic and proposed to him and taken a selfie to remember the moment, one of a hundred little details they'd put together to sell their cover.

(Because it's Blackwatch, Gabe also received several ridiculous versions of the photos--the two of them in a slightly-less-scenic alley, or underwater, or with a rampaging t-rex in the background. No matter what's going on behind them, Gabe can only ever see how happy they look.)

When they'd taken that photo, Gabe figured it was as close as he'd get to the real thing. He'd planned to put it into the suitcase as he packed up, to keep it as a reminder of how happy he could be. Now, he extricates himself from Jesse's cuddling just far enough to pull his comm out of his pocket, open up its camera, and snap a photo of the two of them--the actual, real thing. Jesse nuzzles in against his neck to kiss him, making eye contact with the camera, and Gabe laughs and snaps another photo.

"Psst," Jesse whispers against his neck.

"Hmm?"

"I hate to be picky at a moment like this, but you _still_ ain't actually asked me."

Gabe laughs again. "You wanna get married, Jesse?"

"Why, Gabe, I thought you'd never ask." Jesse grins and kisses him full-on, and Gabe thinks to himself, yeah, a man could get used to this.


	4. In Front of the Fire

Blackwatch is sleeping under the stars tonight.

Valdez volunteers to take first watch, and Edwards beds down for the night, his sleeping bag tucked behind some brush up against the canyon wall. That leaves Gabe and McCree alone together at the campfire, a ways away from where they'll be sleeping. The fire is low, and there's enough space between the two of them that Gabe can stare at McCree across the flickering flames. Gabe's going over the mission plans for tomorrow in his head--looking past McCree instead of at him, that's what he'll say if anybody calls him out--but he's also very definitely watching McCree. McCree, for his part, doesn't seem to notice; he's leaned back with his head tilted up to look at the night sky.

Gabe looks for longer than he should. He watches the way the flickering shadows catch McCree's features and turn them strange and new, something he wants to learn all over again. A warmth grows inside him that has nothing to do with the fire. 

Later than he means to but sooner than he'd like, Gabe manages to tear his eyes away. He stands up and stretches broadly. McCree stays where he is, his eyes fixed on the stars.

Gabe walks over and nudges McCree in the shin with the toe of his boot. "Big day tomorrow," he says in a low voice, not wanting to break the night's quiet. "We all should get some rest."

"Y'know, this really takes me back," McCree says, and he finally looks down, giving Gabe a small, crooked smile.

Gabe goes still. They've worked together for years, and he can count on one hand the number of times McCree has ever willingly brought up anything from his life before Blackwatch. It's none of Gabe's business, not really, not if McCree doesn't let it affect his work--which is, without exception, outstanding--so Gabe has never pushed, despite his interest.

"Oh?" Gabe says, carefully, nonchalantly. He realizes, feeling a little ridiculous, that he's treating it as though the conversation topic is one of the jackrabbits they'd come across on their long hike earlier in the day, easily spooked by his interest or any sudden movement.

"Yeah." McCree leans forward now and pats the dirt beside him, beckoning Gabe back down to the ground. Gabe casts a glance over at the brush where his sleeping bag is waiting for him. He knows it's better if he doesn't sit back down, but goes ahead and does it anyway.

He sits closer this time, as close as he dares. Earlier, he reasons, Valdez had been sitting between them, all the agents around the fire together; now it's just the two of them, about to have a quiet conversation in the dark. This way they won't have to raise their voices. It makes _sense_. There's nothing untoward about it.

Who is he trying to convince?

"You know much about constellations, boss?" McCree asks.

Gabe shakes his head. "City kid. I could probably pick the Big Dipper out of a lineup? But for the most part, when I looked up at night, all I ever saw was light pollution."

"Well, ain't that a shame." McCree smiles. "I spent a lot of time looking at the stars as a kid--when my dad was away on, uh, _business_ , or when we just needed to get out of the house, my ma and I would head outside of town and we'd lie on our backs in the dirt and she'd tell me all about the different constellations." 

McCree leans in, puts a hand on Gabe's back and aligns his face with Gabe's, close enough that Gabe can feel the scrape of McCree's sideburns on his cheek. McCree points up into the sky along a line that both of them can see, tracing a pattern of stars that Gabe is, unsurprisingly, completely unable to concentrate on. He's purposely never let himself get this close to McCree before, and now...

"That one? That's the Warlord. And that one?" McCree's finger moves to point at another section of sky, traces two more vague shapes. Gabe is more focused on the way McCree's facial hair rasps against his skin. "That's the Prodigal, and next to her, the Convict. They don't get along, see, that's why--"

Gabe does not know much about constellations, but all of these sound...a little off. He manages to pull away enough to look over at McCree, to see if he's kidding, but McCree's face is utterly serious, his gaze focused on the sky. Then again, McCree's ability not to break in ridiculous situations has made him an invaluable undercover agent, so just because he looks serious doesn't mean that he is.

Gabe looks up at the sky again--McCree is describing a constellation that's apparently called the Archangel--and says, warily, "Are you _sure_ these are real constellations?"

McCree's mouth twitches, amused, and he chuckles. "Oh, no, I'm pretty sure most of them are made up."

"...what?"

"My ma didn't know anything about astronomy, Reyes. But she was consistent, same fake constellations every time we went out, and so those are the ones I learned. Seems to me that what patterns you find in the chaos is less important than finding that order in the first place."

Gabe huffs out a laugh. "Can't argue with that."

"Haven't really been out to look at the stars like this since then. Didn't really have the inclination, back in Deadlock, and haven't really had the time, since joining up with Blackwatch. Sitting out here, like this..." McCree trails off, and the quiet draws out between them. Gabe is suddenly aware of the crackling of the fire, the whoosh of the cool night breeze, the gentle chirping of the desert crickets.

He's _also_ suddenly aware of McCree's hand, still settled on his back, and how close they're still sitting together. He knows that he should move, but he doesn't--McCree is still--he hasn't moved either--

McCree speaks again, interrupting Gabe's thoughts. "My ma would tell me about how she and my dad would go stargazing when they first were dating. It was a thing the two of them shared, and then it was a thing that she and I shared, and even then I would think about how, someday, maybe, it would be a thing that _I_ would share with somebody..."

There's a long, quiet moment, and then McCree's head tips onto Gabe's shoulder and rests there. It feels weighty, in a couple of different ways, and Gabe can barely let himself breathe. Carefully, carefully, he rests his own head against McCree's, puts an arm around his shoulders. The tension there seems to melt under Gabe's touch, McCree's shoulders relaxing by degrees the longer they sit like this. Gabe wants very badly to be that person, the one who lets McCree relax, the place McCree feels safe. It feels right.

"It took me back," McCree says again, and for just a second, Gabe feels like they could--

Their comms crackle to life simultaneously, and both of them jump at the noise. There's suddenly about three feet of space between them that Gabe doesn't remember putting there, although he wouldn't be surprised if he had. It's safer that way, plausibly deniable, not what he _wants_ but probably what he _needs_ , and he's smart enough to know that.

McCree digs his comm out of his pocket while Gabe's still fumbling for his own, and he and Valdez have a conversation in low tones about an anomaly she'd come across on the perimeter of their little camp. He offers to go check it out and waves away Gabe's offer to go instead.

"Nah, don't worry. Valdez and I've got it under control. You get some sleep, Commander," he says. His grin feels a little off, somehow, and Gabe wonders what and how much he should read into how formally McCree is addressing him. "Big day tomorrow." 

With that, he double-checks his holster, winks at Gabe, and heads off into the night.

Gabe doesn't get up, not right away. He leans his head back and closes his eyes, listening to the fire, breathing. When he opens them, he scans the starry night sky, looking for constellations. _Patterns in the chaos,_ he thinks, and _someone to share it with_ , and he reaches up to touch his cheek.


	5. In the Trunk of a Car

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TECHNICALLY the prompt was "in the back seat of the car", but hey, my cuddles my rules

"Well," Jesse says quietly from the darkness somewhere around Gabe's feet, "This sure ain't how this situation was supposed to go."

Gabe has to laugh at how badly this has gone sideways. The plan had been to meet with Agent Desta, the Blackwatch mole inside the Holubice gang, and get the intel they needed about the gang's base of operations from her. Once they had that, they could head there and she could head for extraction, finally going home after more than a year undercover. Gabe's still not sure what exactly had actually happened, but when he and Jesse arrived at the rendezvous point, Agent Desta had been waiting for them, along with at least eight beefy assholes covered in Holubice tattoos. It's a fight Gabe's pretty sure they could've won, but probably not without blowing his agent's cover and their own, so they'd made a show of struggling and hoped that Desta would show them the same courtesy. And she had, to some extent: instead of executing Gabe and Jesse on the spot, she had ordered that they be bound and _brought to see the boss_. 

So here they are, hands and feet zip-tied, in the trunk of a Holubice car. The car is the kind of luxury sedan that the Holubice leaders probably like their people being seen in around town to flaunt their wealth and power, so while the trunk isn't huge, there's room for both of them, barely, and a little bit of room to maneuver.

This is almost certainly not the first time there's been a body in the trunk of this car, Gabe realizes and then immediately tries to forget. 

He turns his head to see if...yes, okay, the little hands-free LED flashlight is still on his tac vest. He manages to turn it on with his teeth, and he blinks in the sudden light. He'd been tossed in first, and he's facing the front of the car; he wriggles around so that he's facing the other way. Jesse is also facing the back of the car, and he's oriented the opposite way Gabe is, his zip-tied ankles in close proximity to Gabe's face.

He probably should've been more careful--he could put an eye out on Jesse's spurs.

"We've had worse," Gabe says, his voice low, almost a whisper, as he takes stock. He's not sure how much of what's going on in the trunk can be heard in the rest of the car, and he doesn't want to take any chances.

"Maybe, but I gotta say, nothing immediately springs to mind." Jesse flexes his wrists, but, unsurprisingly, the zip-ties don't give way. He huffs in frustration.

"That warehouse in New Orleans, with Genji and the grenades? That one was pretty bad. Or that trip to Antarctica?"

"Maybe, but this sure _feels_ worse." Jesse's chuckle turns into a grunt as the car bounces over what feels like a pretty bad pothole.

"We're in pretty good shape, all things considered."

Jesse manages to turn himself over so he's at least looking in Gabe's direction. "They took our weapons, tied us up, and locked us in a trunk, Gabe. I fail to see how this is 'good shape'."

Gabe lays out what they have. They have the flashlight, plus whatever else is left in their tac vests. They have the knowledge that they're being taken to the Holubice compound, which is at least a two hour drive from the rendezvous point they'd chosen, and which is where they wanted to go anyway. And, most importantly, they have the tools they need to free themselves.

Jesse snorts. "Really. We already have what we need to get free? What exactly is your secret weapon here? I figured if you could SEP your way out of this, you probably would've already."

"I'm surprised I have to remind you, but _one_ of us is wearing boots with knives on them."

Realization dawns on Jesse's face. He shimmies around, twists up so that the spurs of his boots are, theoretically, about where Gabe's hands are tied behind his back.

"Look at you, so flexible," Gabe says as he rotates to get the zip-tie on his hands in reach of Jesse's boots.

"You know it." Gabe doesn't have to see Jesse's face; he can hear the wink in his voice.

It takes a couple tries to get the spurs to behave long enough to cut the zip-ties on Gabe's hands. Once his hands are free, he's able to get them both unbound. With a little more careful, uncomfortable maneuvering, they end up face to face; from there, they take stock again. Agent Desta had taken their guns, but not the majority of the seemingly-innocuous contents of their tac vests; their comms, but not Gabe's watch; the knife Jesse keeps in his boot, but not the boots themselves. She'd done the best she could to give them a fighting chance, and Gabe makes a mental note to put her in for an official commendation, if they all make it out of this alive.

"The rendezvous was supposed to be at sixteen-hundred, right?" Gabe says, checking his watch. Jesse nods. "It's just now seventeen-hundred. If we allow for ten minutes, give or take, of general roughing up before we got on the road, we've got about an hour before we arrive at our destination."

"Still no idea what we're going to find there."

"No," Gabe says, smiling grimly, "But we've got much better odds now."

They work out a plan. It's not one of their best, but it's what they can do with what they've got, and Gabe is confident that the two of them will be able to pull it off. If anyone can, it's them. (He thinks, not for the first time, how lucky he is to have Jesse in his life; how lucky he is to work with Jesse in the field, the two of them syncing together so well that they might as well be sharing a brain; how lucky he is to come home to Jesse at night, the two of them falling asleep in each other's arms and waking up together; how much harder his life would be without Jesse.)

"So what now?" Jesse asks, once they've gone over their plan twice and covered the three different contingencies that Gabe can think of. They're as prepared as they're going to be, and when Gabe checks his watch, they've still got at least half an hour until they arrive at the Holubice compound.

Gabe shrugs. "Not much we _can_ do in the trunk of a car."

Jesse waggles his eyebrows. "I can think of _something_ \--"

" _No_."

"Aww, you're no fun."

"Surely you're not just figuring that out now," Gabe says, deadpan. Jesse's having none of it, though, and he grins at Gabe, tugs him in and kisses him. 

"You know I said no to your idea, right?" Gabe says, pulling away to give Jesse a serious look, but not before he kisses Jesse one or two more times for good measure.

"Nothing wrong with a little bit of kissing, a little bit of cuddling. Don't mean we can't be ready, when the time comes." Jesse shrugs, as if it was the easiest thing in the world. Hell, when Jesse says it, it sounds like it is. "If you're worried about it, I know for a fact that watch of yours has an alarm we can set."

It feels silly, but Gabe sets the alarm and allows Jesse to pull him close. He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath, feels Jesse's arms around him, feels Jesse snug in his own arms. He knows they're far from safe right now, but god, he feels safe when he's this close to Jesse. 

He relaxes, just a little.

"You were right, by the way," Jesse says eventually, soft into Gabe's ear.

"Almost always," Gabe says, which earns him a laugh. "About what this time?"

"We're in pretty good shape. Why, I'm feeling downright good about this."

Gabe smiles against Jesse's shoulder. "Yeah," he says, "Yeah, me too."


	6. For Warmth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really wanted to have this done several months ago, but other life stuff intervened. On the plus side, this now fulfills the January prompt for the [McReyes Monthly challenges](https://www.pillowfort.io/posts/391436)!

Jesse curses under his breath as he fumbles with his comm. He'd nearly lost the thing in the snow earlier, and now it isn't responding when he taps the screen with his heavy cold-weather gloves on. He and Reyes _should_ have heard from their ride out of here by now, so eventually he tugs his glove off with his teeth and gets the damn thing to respond to actual skin contact.

"Pilot," he says, when the connection crackles to life, "What's your status?"

Tack Newton's voice comes through in staticky bursts. "Storm--landing--pretty much--"

"Pretty much what?" Jesse tries to keep the annoyance out of his voice as he struggles to put his glove back on one-handed. "Pilot, please repeat."

"Can't make--landing--snow." There's a thump from the comm, and Tack swears. Jesse's afraid to ask, but at least it seems to have cleared up the static. "Can't make a landing until this storm passes. It's pretty much impossible."

Jesse glances out of the mouth of the cave they're waiting in at the snow outside, and then over at Reyes, who isn't looking too good. Reyes would never admit it, but Jesse knows they were both depending on this extraction to get him back to base and to the infirmary. "Any idea how long that'll be?"

"Hard to say; radar's not cooperating. It could be an hour or two, or it could be into tomorrow. No later than tomorrow morning." 

Jesse groans, just a little. That's very not good. He's not sure the extent of Reyes' injuries, in part because that kind of assessment hadn't seemed necessary when they thought they were ten minutes away from their extraction. They'd also packed light, not expecting to be on the ground for more than half a day. But the snowstorm had rolled in and the mission had taken longer than anticipated to complete, and now this.

"I really am sorry," Tack says, filling the silence on the comms. "You know that if I could get in there and get you, I would."

"I know. Ain't your fault, pilot." Jesse glances at Reyes again. He looks...wobbly, even sitting down. "Call back when you know more. Gonna figure out something here in the meantime."

"Roger." With that, the comm goes dark. 

Jesse takes a deep breath, attempting to center himself. He immediately regrets it--the air is _so_ goddamn cold, it hurts his lungs to inhale too much of it at once. He swears and turns to face Reyes.

"Doesn't sound good," Reyes says through gritted teeth.

"It isn't," Jesse says. "Help ain't coming yet, and we don't have a lot of options. Can't evacuate, can't go back to the compound--"

"Nobody can know Blackwatch was there, so we can't exactly show up and knock on their door."

Jesse nods. "Mess that place is gonna be, not sure there'll even be a door to knock on."

"Warm ourselves on the flames." Reyes chuckles, then winces, curling in on himself a little bit. "So we can't go back, and we can't go home. Guess that leaves us right here."

There _are_ worse situations they could be in, Jesse supposes. Reyes could be leaving a bleeding trail behind them, or they could've missed this cave in their haste to find the rendezvous point in the storm, or it could've been filled with bears. This, but with bears--that would be just his luck. Besides, he and Reyes are resourceful motherfuckers. They can make it through the night. They've made it through worse.

He takes stock of what they need. First: some way to keep warm. Once they've won't freeze to death, they can deal with whatever's wrong with Reyes. 

He empties his pockets onto the cave floor, and Reyes does the same, a little more gingerly. They were both issued a tiny portable heater in their gear for this mission, but Jesse's is missing--probably got lost in the same snowdrift where he'd nearly lost his comm--and Reyes' looks damaged. When Jesse sets it up next to their lantern and turns it on, it sputters and then hums to life. It's not operating at anything close to full capacity, but it's better than nothing. He huddles in close to it, and Reyes does too. 

By extension, Reyes huddles in close to him. Jesse sucks in another cold breath, trying to slow his fluttery heart. The last thing they need is for this clusterfuck to go even further sideways because Jesse can't keep his stupid crush on his commander in check.

Okay, okay. Jesse shakes his head, comes back to himself. There are more important things to think about right now than how close he is to Commander Reyes. On to the second thing: whatever's wrong with Reyes. 

Jesse isn't actually sure what exactly had happened to him. In their haste to get out after setting the grenades, they'd exited the compound a different way than they'd originally planned. Jesse, for his part, had gotten the wind knocked out of him when he'd fallen into a ravine that he doesn't remember seeing on their briefing maps. His comm had fallen out of his pocket, and from the look of the supplies on the floor, he'd landed badly on about half of his gear. He'd been aware of a ruckus--maybe even gunshots--happening above him, but there wasn't much he could do about it until he got his feet back under him. There was snow in places he didn't even know he had places. By the time he had, Reyes was in the ravine with him, yanking him up out of the snowdrift with a groan; whatever had gone wrong with Reyes had happened before then.

Had it, whatever _it_ is, happened to Reyes because Jesse hadn't been there?

"I can see you thinking," Reyes grumbles. "There's steam rising off your head. Spit it out."

"You gonna make it through the night, boss? That's a pretty powerful wince you got going on there."

Reyes chuckles. "That's a scowl, McCree, and it's just how my face looks. I'd have thought you'd know that by now."

"Har har, very funny." Jesse pulls his hands out of his gloves and holds them over the heater, glaring at Reyes.

"What exactly do you think you could do? If I'm hurt really badly, nothing here--" Reyes waves a hand over the things on the floor, "--would make a difference. And if I'm not hurt that badly, I can wait out the night."

"We've got one biotic pack left," Jesse says, retrieving it from the pile. He turns the canister over in his hands, staring at the glowing heater.

"Sure, but what if we need it more tomorrow?"

"And what if we don't?" Jesse takes a risk, nudges into Reyes with his shoulder. "C'mon, at least let me see how bad it is."

Reyes grumbles but doesn't move away. This close to him, Jesse can see at least two bullet holes in his heavy coat, each one ringed with a dark brown circle of blood. 

He reaches out with thawing fingers to trace along the bullet hole, not quite touching the bloody fabric. "You're bleeding."

"Am I?" Reyes tugs his coat out away from his body so he can see it more clearly, craning his neck a little. Jesse pulls his hand back. "Oh, shit, I guess I was."

"Was?"

"I heal quick."

"Nobody heals _that_ quick--" Jesse says, but stops as Reyes grabs his hand and jabs his finger through one of the bullet holes in his coat. Jesse tries to recoil, afraid of poking an open wound, but Reyes' grip on him is strong as steel--and his fingers stop when they brush against smooth, hot skin.

_What the hell._

Reyes jumps, letting go of Jesse's hand. " _Jesus_ , you're freezing!"

Jesse can't help but laugh. He gestures at the cave and the snow outside. "Aren't you?"

With another wince, Reyes leans over to the collected pile of gear and rifles through it. Jesse's not quite sure what he's looking for, but he doesn't seem to be finding it.

"You may not be bleeding, but you're definitely hurt,” Jesse says.

Reyes waves a dismissive hand at him. "Internal organs take a little longer for the SEP shit to patch up than skin does. As long as I don't exert myself too much, I'll be fine by the morning."

"Or you could use the biotics!" Jesse wiggles the canister at him and laughs when Reyes rolls his eyes and turns back to digging through their gear.

"I could've sworn we had one of those new blankets the tech lab came up with," Reyes mutters, shoving the MREs aside for the third time.

"The ones that start tiny and get big and warm?"

Reyes doesn't look up from the pile. "Technically, they start big and get packaged tiny. Once they don't have to expend power keeping themselves small, they can use that power to heat themselves."

"Can't say I really care how it works, as long as it's warm."

Reyes looks up from the pile like he's just remembered something. He pats down his coat pockets again, wincing a little as he does, then unzips the front of the coat and pulls something triumphantly out of one of his inside pockets. "I _knew_ we'd brought one..." He trails off when he lifts the package into the lantern light, as they both see that it's been damaged.

Reyes sighs heavily, and they sit, silent, huddled close to the heater and to each other. Jesse notices that Reyes hasn't zipped his coat back up, but doesn't ask about it--it lets him sneak glances at the bullet holes in Reyes' shirt and the shiny new skin that peeks out through them. He's so handsome in the lantern light, shadows shifting on his face as he leans forward and back, trying to get comfortable and obviously not succeeding.

He knows Reyes sees him looking, but he doesn't say anything either.

"It's the SEP stuff, the healing," Reyes says quietly, after what feels like a long silence. "It makes my body temperature spike when it's working. That's why I'm not cold."

Jesse probably ought to be surprised; he's more surprised to realize that he's not. "So what you're saying is that I don't need to be sharing this heater."

This startles a laugh out of Reyes. "I basically _am_ a heater--you could just stay close to me."

There's a pause as that hangs in the air between them, Jesse unsure what to do with that declaration, Reyes suddenly concentrating very hard on the heater, unable to meet his eyes.

"Didn't realize that was an option," Jesse says, lightly, in case Reyes was joking. He was almost certainly joking. There's no way that--

Reyes looks up at him. "If you want." 

Jesse does want, Jesse very much does want. His heart is beating like it might escape from his chest.

"That way we could save the heater for later, when we might need it more," Reyes continues, sounding almost cautious.

Jesse realizes he hasn't actually responded, just sat there, probably looking dumbfounded. Real smooth, McCree. "Very practical," he says, his voice nearly steady. He scoots in close to Reyes, tucks himself up under his arm, trying to be careful not to do anything that might exacerbate Reyes' healing injuries. He's not sure how close is too close.

Reyes lets out an exasperated sigh. "I'm not gonna break, McCree," he says, and his arm tightens around Jesse's shoulders, pulling them close together. Yeah, this is exactly where Jesse wants to be.

"You warm yet?" Reyes asks eventually.

"Getting there." The body heat is definitely helping, but all the snow that had wormed its way under Jesse's clothes earlier has melted by now, making him colder and damper than he should be. He's not warm yet, but he's warmer.

Reyes eyes him for a long moment before saying, matter-of-factly, "Take off your coat." 

Jesse's halfway out of it before he stops to wonder why. He hesitates for a moment, then peels it the rest of the way off, tossing it on top of the pile of gear. With his damp shirt exposed to the air like this, he shivers.

"C'mere," Reyes says, and he tugs Jesse close again. 

Jesse is bolder this time, slips his arms up under Reyes' coat where it's even warmer. Easier to ask forgiveness than permission, and he is _very_ cold.

"Good," Reyes says. The words rumble low in Reyes' chest, probably too quiet to hear if Jesse's face wasn't pressed up against his torso. And yeah, Jesse thinks, it _is_ good. He settles in, feels himself relax. He listens to Reyes' heart, beating slightly too fast. It's very good.


	7. For Comfort

"So, what the fuck is up with Reyes?" Torre asks, unceremoniously, through a big bite of sandwich.

Jesse looks around the table at the other Blackwatch agents. They all look a little uncomfortable, an unspoken conversation happening in their flickering glances: they've all noticed what Torre is talking about, but nobody's actually come out and _said_ anything about it until now. Jesse figured that as long as his boss was still doing his job and doing it well, it wasn't any of their business what the fuck was up with Reyes.

Something _is_ up with Reyes, though. He's trying to hide it, and to be fair he's hiding it pretty well. If standard Blackwatch training didn't include a whole module on how to read people, he'd probably be getting away with it. But he'd made this bed full of competent agents and now he has to lie in it, so they all notice how terse he's become over the last few months, the edge of anger to his voice, the dark circles under his eyes, how he rubs his temples when he thinks nobody's looking. His normally neat office had become a mess. And he'd disappeared without warning a few times, leaving Jesse in charge--nothing Jesse couldn't handle, but not how these things were normally done.

Still, it's hard to feel like it's their business. Nothing has changed in Blackwatch's day to day operations, and Reyes has been nothing but professional when it counts. Hell, two weeks ago, he'd personally gone in to extract Bennett's team from the shitshow in Jeddah, and they'd all come back alive and singing his praises.

Nobody's answered Torre yet, and he takes another big bite of sandwich before continuing: "Do you guys think it's bad news?"

"Not sure that's our business,"Jesse says, his tone low--not a threat, not yet, but floating the idea of one. A _warning_.

"Everything is our business," Torre says, cheerfully oblivious to Jesse's warning.

"If it was anything we needed to know, Reyes would tell us."

"Would he, though?"

Jesse gives Torre a hard stare. "Yes."

" _Would he, though_?" Torre repeats, his voice going high and skeptical.

"He might not tell all of us, but he'd definitely tell McCree," Valdez says. Jesse glares at her, but she shrugs, unfazed. "If he won't tell his second-in-command, who _will_ he tell?"

"I'm not sure it works like that--" Jesse says.

At the same exact time, Torre says, "Oh, that's a good idea--"

Jesse stops. "What?!"

This, somehow, is how Jesse finds himself outside Reyes's office. He hesitates at the door. He is still pretty sure this isn't a good idea, but on the other hand, it's not like Reyes can fire him, and _someone_ needs to know what's going on.

He knocks, and the door slides open.

Reyes looks up from his messy desk momentarily when Jesse walks in, shoving the papers he's looking at under a pile of other things in a way that is definitely not suspicious. "McCree!” he says, rifling through a different pile. "To what do I...” 

Jesse's brow furrows as Reyes trails off without finishing his thought. "...owe the pleasure?" he offers.

"That one." Reyes looks up. "What do you need?"

Jesse realizes that he probably should've come in here with a plan. Well, too late now. "Are you--is everything okay, boss?"

Reyes's eyes narrow. "What makes you think there's something wrong?"

Jesse gestures at the messy desk. "Lotta little things. You've been off for a while, and Blackwatch is starting to notice." Reyes doesn't say anything, just sits, stone-faced, and so Jesse continues, "Anything we need to worry about?"

To say that Reyes's expression goes soft would be incorrect, but it does shift a little, softens at the edges like the air has gone out of it. "Nothing Blackwatch needs to worry about. You all keep doing your jobs and I'll keep doing mine."

Jesse stares at him for a long moment. It hasn't escaped his attention that Reyes has not actually given him a straight answer yet. But like he'd told Torre, it's not their business, and there's not much he can do until it is.

"Well, if there's anything we can do to help--" he tries.

Reyes cuts him off. "There isn't."

"--just ask," Jesse finishes. It's important, somehow, that Reyes hear that. They stare at each other for another long moment before Reyes's phone rings. Jesse can't see his screen, but his expression clouds, and Jesse leaves so that he can deal with the call, whatever it is, in peace.

Well, that was a bust. Jesse heads across the compound towards the gym; he and Valdez are scheduled to run some new recruit training this afternoon, and he's learned the hard way that  if he doesn't get stretched out appropriately beforehand he'll be sore for three days. He'll have to fill Torre in afterwards--

Athena's voice sounds in his earpiece. "Agent McCree, you are needed in the office of Commander Reyes."

Jesse stops walking. "I just came from there," he says, raising his hand to touch the earpiece and make it obvious that he hasn't just started talking to himself. "Reyes made it very clear that I wasn't needed there."

"You are needed in Commander Reyes's office," Athena repeats.

Jesse sighs in frustration. He _had_ told Reyes to ask; it would be pretty awful to go back on that right away.  He turns back the way he came, texting Valdez that he might be a little late.

He pauses in front of the office door again, but this time it slides open before he can touch it. Inside, the office is empty, and a mess: papers everywhere, the monitor askew, the chair overturned. What the hell had happened here? Some kind of enemy intrusion? It's consistent with a certain kind of Blackwatch information extraction--find what you need, then make the place enough of a disaster that nobody will realize what's missing until it's too late. But surely nobody could raid the commander's office like that.

And for that matter, where the hell is Reyes?

There's a noise from behind the desk, and Jesse's gun is out of its holster in a flash. He holds it out in front of himself, ready for anything, as he edges around the desk.

...okay, so it turns out there were things he wasn't actually ready for, and one of those things is Commander Reyes huddled on the ground, looking intensely distressed. His knees are tucked up towards his chin, and his eyes are closed. It takes half a second for Jesse's brain to even register what he's looking at, but once he does, he lowers his gun and sags with relief.

"Don't suppose you're going to try to tell me again that you're just fine and there's nothing to worry about," Jesse says as he reholsters his gun. Reyes doesn't even open his eyes, just shakes his head, and Jesse slides down to take a seat next to him, a respectful distance between them. "I know it still ain't my business, but you wanna talk about it?"

"Alex wants a divorce," Reyes mumbles, his mouth half-hidden behind his own folded-up knees.

"From who?"

Reyes finally makes eye contact, but only to shoot Jesse a dirty look.

"Oh, from you?" Reyes gives a small nod, and Jesse has to take a moment to let what he thought he knew about the world settle back into place. "Didn't realize you were married, boss."

"It's not a fact I advertise." Reyes eyes him suspiciously.

Jesse puts his hands up. "Hey, I'm great at keeping secrets. It's kind of my job."

Reyes snorts. "I love my family and wanted them to be safe from the work that I do, so I...compartmentalized. I kept them tucked away and tried to keep the world safe for them. Turns out, that that's not a great way to keep your marriage happy."

Jesse makes a sympathetic noise. No matter how much he cares about his commander, this is way outside his area of expertise and way above his pay grade.

"She's been unhappy for a while, and I just... wasn't around to even notice. She had to _tell me_." Reyes huffs an angry sigh. "By the time she told me, there wasn't anything I could do to fix it. I tried, I really did, these last few months, but..."

The rest of the pieces fall into place for Jesse: Reyes's lack of focus, his anger, the way he'd been disappearing. There was somewhere more important he had to be, and things there haven't gone well.

"I can cover for you if you need to take more time," Jesse says, although even as he says it he knows it's not enough.

"It would be too little too late." Reyes lowers his head again, and they sit in silence for what feels like too long. Jesse's just about ready to get up and start collecting the scattered papers when he realizes that Reyes is crying. There's no sound, just a change in his breathing, a slight movement of his shoulders.

Jesse's been in this situation before--well, not _this_ situation, where his commander (about whom he has a complicated set of feelings) is the one doing the crying, but he's definitely had to deal with Blackwatch agents having breakdowns before. The work they do is hard, and it's not unexpected that it gets overwhelming sometimes. Jesse's go-to move in this situation is "an arm around the shoulders, accompanied by comforting noises and an acknowledgement of feelings", which doesn't seem like a bad idea in this situation? It's better than what he's currently doing, which is absolutely nothing.

He hesitates, and then carefully puts an arm around Reyes's shoulders. Reyes stiffens, obviously surprised, and then one loud, gasping sob escapes him.

They stay like that for a while longer, Reyes's shoulders heaving with silent sobs, Jesse trying to make comforting noises that don't sound patronizing. Eventually, Reyes lifts his head, wipes his eyes on his sleeve.

"Shit," he says, which is so unexpected that it makes Jesse laugh. "That was...unprofessional."

He has not moved away from Jesse yet.

"It's Blackwatch," Jesse says. "Nobody cares if we're professional, as long as we get the job done."

"Well, good work, you got the job done," Reyes says. He leans his head over onto Jesse's shoulder and takes and lets out a deep breath; it's over before Jesse can even realize what's happening. Then he extricates himself, standing up and then offering Jesse a hand up too. They survey the mess of the office, and Reyes winces. "Guess I have to clean this all up now."

Jesse checks his comm--he is definitely late for the thing with Valdez, and he winces too. "I have to go. Will you be...?"

Reyes waves at him dismissively. "Yeah, yeah, I'm fine, go."

"You're sure?"

" _Go_ , Jesse."

Jesse takes him at his word and turns to leave, starting to text Valdez that he's on his way. Then, Reyes says his name and stops him in his tracks. 

"Jesse?"

Jesse turns back. He can't be sure, but he thinks he catches the briefest flash of a smile on Reyes's face.

"Thank you, for this." Reyes gestures vaguely, a gruff and uncomfortable scowl now firmly on his face, and Jesse smiles.

"Any time, boss."


	8. Reluctantly

Gabe pauses in the doorway. The light is still on behind him, and the long shadow he casts falls across the bed and across Jesse. Gabe stands there, leaning on the door frame, just looking. Something he doesn't want to name churns in his stomach.

He wasn't supposed to see those messages. He knows he wasn't. But he'd seen them, a string of them, from somebody saved in Jesse's personal phone as "White". 

_C'mon J, we had an agreement,_ the messages read. _Cough it up. You have to have SOME info for DL on that place. That's why you're sleeping with your commander, right?_

Jesse hasn't responded to the message thread, but Gabe knows that doesn't really mean anything. Gabe knows Jesse's training--you don't do intel drops over an insecure phone, you do them securely, in person or using a trusted secure third party if you have to. If Jesse had responded with the intel that White had been asking for, Gabe would never know.

Jesse's voice floats up towards Gabe. "You gonna come to bed, or you gonna stand there all night?"

Gabe starts, coming back to himself. "Didn't think you were awake."

"I wasn't, but then some asshole stood in the doorway with the light on."

"What an asshole," Gabe agrees lightly, turning off the light and stepping into the room, closing the door behind him. He is angry and confused and hurt, but he also knows that he can't let on that anything is wrong. He's spent his career prepping for worst-case scenarios; the worst case here is Jesse getting spooked and leaving, imploding Blackwatch behind him as he goes. It's time for a little counter-intelligence, before either of them does anything rash.

"I know you had a long day," Jesse says as Gabe shucks off his uniform, stripping down to his boxers. "Anything I can do to help?" Gabe cannot see the accompanying eyebrow waggle in the dark, but it's obvious in Jesse's voice.

Gabe shakes his head. "Not tonight. I'm tired." Because he is angry, because he an idiot, because he cannot help himself, he adds, "Just be here for me."

"Always," Jesse says, not missing a beat. "You know that."

Gabe nods. He did think he knew that. 

He crawls into bed, and Jesse snuggles up behind him, warm and close. It makes part of Gabe, a big part, feel safe, and he reluctantly allows himself to settle into Jesse's embrace. The part of him that doesn't feel safe, the part of him that's still angry, is thinking about all the things that Jesse knows and about how much damage all the things he knows could do in the wrong hands. Blackwatch has been very much need-to-know, but over these last few years, as Jesse has become his partner in several senses of the word, Jesse has needed to know so much. Almost all of Blackwatch's operations have gone through the two of them; Jesse had either created or clarified a huge chunk of the Blackwatch operational guide. He knows all the cracks in Blackwatch's facade and could take this place apart piece by piece if he wanted to. The amount he knows could be, well, catastrophic, and Gabe doesn't want to think about how bad it could be for them--for him--if it comes to that.

Gabe also doesn't want to think about the part of the message he hates most. _That's why you're sleeping with your commander, right?_ He doesn't want to think that he could be taken advantage of like that, by someone he trusts, by someone he genuinely cares about. He'd thought that maybe he finally got to have one nice thing that he got to keep. 

He shouldn't have been so stupid to think it would last. He doesn't get to--

"Gabe." Jesse's voice cuts through his thoughts. "You're never gonna sleep with so much on your mind."

"What?"

"I can almost hear you thinking. You're so _tense_." Jesse squeezes him close, tucks his chin against the hollow where Gabe's neck meets his shoulder. His beard rubs scratchily against Gabe's neck, and the feeling of safety flares again in Gabe's chest. "You wanna talk about it?"

God, does Gabe want to talk about it.

"No," Gabe says, forcing himself to relax. "Let's just sleep."

Jesse makes a thoughtful noise, right into his ear. "If you're sure."

Gabe really isn't sure, about much of anything anymore. But there's nothing he can do about it right now, and so he takes a deep breath and says, "Yeah, I'm sure. G'night, Jesse."

Jesse presses three kisses in a row to his shoulder, and Gabe knows the rhythm: _I. Love. You._

"Love you too," Gabe murmurs, squeezing his eyes shut as though that will ward off whatever complicated thing it is that he's feeling. He takes a deep breath, then another, and does his best to sleep.


End file.
